Wellspect's investment in major energy savings at Global Mölndal plant

For more than 10 years, Wellspect’s global plant uses energy from renewable sources. With a host of initiatives completed and in the pipeline, we spoke to Magnus Hjalber, Senior Facilities Manager at our Mölndal plant, about the challenges and the progress Wellspect is making with our commitment to sustainability.

What has been achieved so far?

As well as securing renewable energy sources for the last 10 years, Wellspect has implemented a new energy policy, which requires us to demand higher requirements of our machine suppliers for both:

• energy efficiency
• energy metering

Our manufacturing operation is now moving towards the use of electric motors over pneumatic control, as electricity has significantly better efficiency than compressed air. We have also renovated the main site’s facade and windows, to lower energy use. The ventilation unit undergoes continuous upgrades.

• In order to further lower our environmental footprint, solar cells are now installed on one of our buildings at the site, with a capacity of 27.7 kW. We will also replace windows to part of the production, which should provide a saving of 20,000 kWh
  
  
• The new air compressor has been installed, which will provide better efficiency and this extra investment reduces energy use by another 10%
  
  
• Lighting in our warehouse to be replaced with LED lighting, a saving of 35,000 kWh / year.

Charging posts will be installed, supporting the choice for employees as, many of whom now work from home, to choose an electric car should they have to visit the site.

How do you prioritize where to invest and improve?

We’re increasing the number of measuring points for electricity consumption to be able to visualize the consumption in real time with energy mapping scheduled continuously. This gives valuable information about how and where we shall prioritize when it comes to energy savings.

How do you see the development going forward?

There is an increasing interest and concern among our customers and employees in terms of a product’s life cycle. Energy use is the central factor, so there is always a need for continuous improvement, and understanding a product’s life cycle is of paramount importance if we are to continue to invest in being sustainable.

We are proud of that and we want to be an attractive workplace that demonstrably cares about these critical issues. I use an electric hybrid car myself and have solar panels on my house – I feel it's responsible to apply these initiatives at every level, and it is absolutely necessary that we as a company contribute to a sustainable society.